How do you get good at sight reading?

Well, the more you practise it the better you get.

There are some very good books around that will help you improve; such as

Improve your sight-reading (Paul Harris)

Right at Sight (T A Johnson).

The sight-reading source book (Alan Bullard)

These are graded, although not all of them cover all grades - but have a look in your music shop and see what you can find. If you really struggle with sight-reading, go back a couple of grades to practise.

Be systematic when you sight-read. Rhythm first, then key, notes etc. Go slowly, not at an unrealistic speed which will trip you up at the first hurdle!

Maggie

schrecklich....

My teacher also says to look out for obvious things such as scales and arpeggios in the piece, and then sequences etc

theory.......................IS INTERSTING??????????????????????????does it really sounds ''interesting''?

If you are serious about improving your sight reading then my advice would be play as much music and as many different styles of music as you can. Firstly, this will improve how quickly you read the notes, how to approach and adapt to different styles of music and to be more aware of particular difficult rhythms etc....essentially you should become quicker and more fluent, a better sight reader no less!!
I improved my sight reading by collecting and playing as much music as I could in my twenties...not quite play everything there is, so there is nothing left to learn, but very nearly every type of music and well known piece!
I once attempted to sight read the Piano solo of Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto which took me about an hour to get through. It sounded pretty awful, but I felt like I'd achieved something and since then no sight reading challenge has been too difficult after getting through that.
Gae

This is where some "theory" helps if you've integrated it. You get to recognise shapes and outlines. So a chord progression should look the same in any key and why double sharps and flats are useful. A progression Dma7->Gmin, looks on paper no different from D#maj7 (with a double-sharp F)->G#min. You get so you don't need to suss all the different notes, you instinctively recognise what's going on.

I go along with what everyone else has said - practice. It takes a long time.

Some interesting advice above for this bete noir.

I scraped my sightreading at grade 6 and have gone back to grade 4. Surprising, the number of pieces graded at 4 that I have found difficult! I have also been going back through my earlier grade books for the pieces that I did not do for the exam and have had a go at them.

Apart from that, just picking up pieces in books that I have accumulated over the years and playing them.

I also try to set aside a discrete 15 minutes a day devoted only to sightreading (as an addition to and as a separate session to the main practice time) as I can never discipline myself to incorporate the sightreading into the main practice session. If you get what I mean!

I am also trying not to look at grade 6 or 7 sightreading for a while because I want to build up confidence so that when I do come to look at the grade 6 sightreading exercises again, I will be pleasantly surprised. One lives in hope!

Perhaps I could give people that are about to take sight reading tests in their graded exams a few tips here, as I've just taken Grade 8, and always considered myself to be quite a poor sight reader. However I got 18/21 for the sight reading, which I certainly wasn't expecting! I think what the examiners are looking for in the exams are people that keep the overall shape of the piece without stopping - on no account go back and correct yourself, keep on going, and try to make the next bar a new beginning if you made mistakes in the previous bars. Analyse the piece of music as much as possible before you start to play, and try to hold the impression of how you think the piece should sound in your, this should help to keep the "overall picture" of the piece. With regard to keys, try to think of scales, and keep the key signature of the piece/scale in your head as you play.

The other thing about Sight Reading, especially in Exams, is, if you keep the music flowing reasonably well, ignoring the few odd mistakes, then you will get a rough sketch of the piece and a better mark for your efforts. The examiner doesn't expect a perfect rendition, unless you're the Teacher! When a pupil of mine is doing an AB sight reading excercise, they often stop because they hear a dissonance and they think they have played a wrong note...quite often, with the AB examples, they haven't played the wrong note...if you know what I mean?
I just love hearing an 11 year old trying to Sight Read an homage to Peter Maxwell Davies. Dont you?

Gae

The last six months I have been composing the music for a pantomime and hours upon hours of looking at the digital score on my computer has helped my sight reading. I can now play preludes and fugies (Yes i know they are not actually called fugies...) by Bach that I could never play.

So composition, theory, sight reading books and practise i'd say is the route forward.